In this contribution to the Digital Forum of the Journal of Victorian Culture I describe how a new type of multimodal machine learning can be used to the study of the thousands of illustrations published in Victorian newspapers, periodicals, and books. The contribution emphasizes how examining images and text together, as these multimodal models were trained to do, can help scholars explore, enrich, and analyse popular Victorian visual culture.

Read it here

‘Scene of the fatal accident at Staplehurst, on the South-Eastern Railway—from a sketch taken the next day’, Illustrated London News (17 June 1865). Via Wikimedia Commons.